Thursday, July 25, 2019

Former Jet pilots on flight mode for training

Calcutta: Ten pilots from Calcutta who were earlier with the grounded Jet Airways and now hired by IndiGo will soon leave for Madrid in Spain to undergo refresher training, which will include hours in a simulator.

It’s not the Calcutta group alone that is on flight mode to get the hang of the aircraft they will be flying in their new assignments.

Lack of enough flight simulators in India has left the airlines that have absorbed former Jet pilots with no option but to send them abroad for the mandatory refresher training.

While working for Jet, most pilots were flying Boeing aircraft. Jet also had a few Airbus A330 aircraft.

IndiGo — which has hired more than 300 Jet pilots — has 220 aircraft of the Airbus A320 family. “As many as 128 of them are A320 Ceo, 87 are A320 Neo and five are A321 Neo,” an IndiGo official said.

The airline’s fleet strength stands at 220.

“The operation of Boeing and Airbus aircraft is completely different. There are major differences between Airbus A330 and Airbus A320, too,” said a senior pilot who was with Jet and is now with a low-cost airline.

“Someone joining IndiGo from Jet has to unlearn and then learn fresh. On an average a pilot has to undergo six months of training, which include many hours in a simulator, during a transition.”

Among the foreign destinations the pilots are heading to are Dubai, Singapore, Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Amman (Jordan), Bangkok (Thailand) and Madrid, said sources of various airlines that have recruited Jet pilots.

Apart from IndiGo, SpiceJet, Vistara and Air India are among the carriers that have appointed Jet pilots.
25/07/19 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph

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